Critical Role, the weekly Dungeons and Dragons live-stream, smashed records with their Kickstarter to fund an animated series based upon their games. After an initial goal of $750,000, the final pledged amount was $11.3 million. This made it the most funded TV or film project of all time. Since then, cast members Travis Willingham and Sam Riegel have kept fans up to date on the latest announcements regarding the series. But with a huge announcement that Amazon Prime has partnered with the cast to create and expand upon the series, it seems the sky is the limit for Critical Role.
Amazon Prime will exclusively premiere the show, which is titled Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina. What was initially a 10-episode singular season will now be a total of 24 episodes across two seasons. Amazon’s support will also add a bigger budget to the series and allow them to push further into the storyline of Campaign One. The series will be produced by Emmy award-winning animation production company Titmouse. Chris Prynoski, Titmouse president and founder, stated:
“I’ve been wanting to make an animated show based on fantasy role playing games since I was 1st level. I’m overjoyed for Titmouse to join the Critical Role adventuring party to slay this beast alongside the mighty Amazon army!”
https://twitter.com/CriticalRole/status/1191778691979735041?s=20
Jennifer Salke, Head of Amazon Studios, also commented:
“Critical Role blazed a new trail for original digital content, with fresh new voices and humor that earned devoted fans around the world, as evidenced by their wildly successful Kickstarter campaign. We’re thrilled to work with the whole team to bring The Legend of Vox Machina, and new Critical Role series, to our Prime Video customers.”
The animated series will, of course, star Critical Role’s cast of Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brien, Matthew Mercer, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham. The cast also serves as executive producers to the series in collaboration with Brandon Auman, Chris Prynoski, and Sung Jin Ahn as supervising director. Sam Riegel, who will be reprising his role as Scanlan for the series, stated:
“We were absolutely floored by the level of enthusiasm we received on the Kickstarter campaign, and now we can deliver exactly what the fans wanted, and MORE. Teaming with Prime Video to deliver the series to fans across the globe is exciting and surreal — and we’re psyched to be able to tell even more stories with not just one, but two 12-episode seasons!”
The show is set to release in 2020 but no release date has been announced yet. Critical Role streams every Thursday on Twitch.
